Steering has always been a problem in recreational sledding. The tranditional recreational sled, which is provided with a pair of metal runners connected to a pivotal steering cross bar, is steered by the using of the strength of the arms to turn the steering cross bar and thereby to warp the runners. The difficulty with this approach is that it provides only minimal directional control. The runners are hard to warp and rare indeed is the child who has sufficient arm strength to obtain adequate control on a crowded slope.
Alternative steering arrangements, such as those exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,414,284 issued to J. N. Rosekrans, Jr., et al, utilize drag or breaking devices secured to opposite sides of the sled. To turn the sled in a given direction, the user merely applys a drag force on the appropriate side of the sled. The difficulty with this approach, however, is that directional control is achieved only at the expense of speed. In typical snow conditions on all but the steepest hills, this loss of speed is unacceptable to most children. Furthermore, many such steering arrangements are dependent on arm strength which, as mentioned, is deficient in small children.
Yet a further approach, such as that illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,635,490, involves the use of diverging curved runners. Steering is effected by leaning in the direction desired, thereby placing more weight on the runner diverging in that direction. But the diverging runners necessarily slow down the sled, as compared with parallel runner sleds, even when the course is straight. Moreover, while such sleds may be steered by a child in the sitting position, it is highly difficult to control them in the prone position because of the difficulty of generating the requisite torque while lying down.